Tattoo Search

Mark purchased another polo horse. She was in a polo lesson program in Newport, RI. Guess she was too much for the beginner students. It happens to be the same place where we bought Eva (Read "The $500 Polo Pony" 1-23-09). The first time I saw her, I thought "Arabian, how odd for a polo horse!". She has a dished face, and short back. I was surprized to see that she had a lip tattoo. Thoroughbreds are required to be lip tattooed in order to participate in an offical TB race.The tattoo consists of a letter followed by 4-5 numbers. A foreign born TB will have an asterisk followed by numbers. The letters corresponds to the horse's year of birth. 1971-1996/A-Z; 1997-2010/A-N. If the TB is 25 yrs old or older, it will only have a letter and 4 numbers. The Jockey Club is wonderful about helping with researching a lip tattoo. In the past it usually has only taken a couple hours from submission of a Tattoo ID Form to recieving the info on the horse. Sometimes pictures are required, but it is an easy process. Well, the new horse, who came with the name Saffron, had a horrible tattoo. Jenn, Mark and I all took guesses as to what it read. The letter looked like an F,P or H. This meant the year of birth could be 1976,1978, 1986, 2002 or 2004. The numbers looked like 4, 1, and 0. I submitted what little info I had, guessing the letter was an "F". Mark had been told she was 8 or 9. She definately wasn't 4 or 24! I also took a photo of the tattoo, and after a few emails back and forth with the Jockey Club, a match was found. The winner was/is F44602, and they were able to find this match with my submission of F_1_0_!! I was/am very impressed. Saffrons registered name is "West Ballerina" Born April 5, 2002 in Iowa. --insert soapbox--For those of you that think a slaughter plant in another state will not affect your horse here in MA, take note! Iowa! I also have horses from FL, TX and CA. A slaughter plant in ANY state puts ALL horses at risk.--off soapbox---Back to West Ballerina. So after all the research, we found out we have a TB from Iowa, who was an unuccessful race horse, who was from unsuccessful parents. Why oh Why do they breed these horse!! Well she was fortunate enough to find her way to Mark, is a great polo horse, very sweet, and Mark promptly changed her name to "Mudslide"!!!